EXERCISE MANAGEMENT
TAPPING INTO APPS
KATH HUDSON TAKES A LOOK AT THE GROWING TECHNOLOGICAL OPTIONS FOR TRACKING ACTIVITY BOTH IN AND OUTSIDE OF THE GYM
U
sing apps and other new technology to track fitness progress is increasingly becoming the norm among
exercisers, whether working out on their own or at the gym. Last year, Life Fitness conducted an
independent fitness and technology study that evaluated the habits of exercisers from seven countries, all of whom owned smartphones or tablets and exercised at least twice a week. It found that: nearly three-quarters
of regular exercisers used some form of technological device during their workouts; 62 per cent used some form of digital content outside of the gym to support their workout programme; and more than half of respondents considered themselves more successful at achieving their weight and fitness goals thanks to technology. Meanwhile 33 per cent of respondents said that,
provided prices and location were similar, they would be willing to switch gyms in favour of one that offered them access to the technology they wanted in the gym. And 75 per cent per cent of those aged 30 or under said access to personal content would encourage them to work out more. Equipment manufacturers have taken
this on board, with most of the major players now offering advanced consoles that include inbuilt exercise tracking facilities, as well as access to media and other forms of entertainment. Many have also developed their own apps to support these on-kit consoles, allowing out-of-club activity to be tracked too. But things don’t end there: equipment
manufacturers are increasingly linking their systems with established third party apps, so exercisers don’t need to change their habits or use multiple apps to track their activity. We take a look at some of these partnerships.
TECHNOGYM Technogym’s mywellness cloud is now able to synchronise with Runkeeper and MapMyFitness, with all its subsidiary applications such as MapMyRun, MapMyRide and MapMyDogWalk. Both Runkeeper and MapMyFitness
use GPS on smartphones to track outdoor activities according to distance travelled, meaning that activities such as cycling, running, skiing and walking can be measured. Data such as a route map, altitude changes during the activity, split times per kilometre covered and average pace are also tracked. Once connected with the Technogym
Technogym’s mywellness cloud stores all forms of activity data in one single location
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system, data from Runkeeper and MapMyFitness automatically transfers to the mywellness cloud on completion of the workout. All activity data, from in and outside of the gym, can therefore be stored and tracked in one single location.
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital The two apps were chosen due to
their popularity: Runkeeper has more than 19 million users worldwide, while MapMyFitness has over 10 million.
“Partnering with them was the ideal solution to help end-users record everything in one place without changing their exercising tracking habits,” says Andrea Bianchi, Technogym MD. “Since all user data is merged into
one Technogym mywellness account, and constantly available in the cloud, it’s quick and easy to add and integrate external applications to provide users with comprehensive feedback about their lifestyle. “As well as being convenient for users,
this offers a great opportunity for operators to engage with customers who already exercise outdoors: even when people can’t get to the gym, they can still measure their outdoor activities. This helps end-users maintain motivation and stay engaged with their gym, and contributes to greater overall momentum in staying fit.”
PRECOR Precor completed its first integration with a third party app, EveryMove, in February of this year. This partnership provides Precor with an instant link to many of the top fitness tracking devices via one portal: EveryMove integrates data from Precor’s own Preva app, but also with more than 20 other well- known apps and devices such as FitBit, Nike Fuel/Nike+, MyFitnessPal and Runkeeper. This enables exercisers to aggregate their data from a variety of sources rather than limiting them to only one or two options. EveryMove is a free app that enables
consumers to track and capture their healthy activities and convert that information into reward points. Workout information can be entered
August 2013 © Cybertrek 2013
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